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Part One: Introduction

You might be wondering why this area has been created on
Dragonskull other than the fact that the films you can watch here contain
illusions of an unusual plot or nature.

The fact is that during the pioneering first ten years in
the history of making films and showing them to the paying public, two
illusionists, W. R. Booth and Georges Melies, created illusions on film
of a bizarre nature which they could not produce live.In doing so, they invented and discovered trick
photography and techniques, all of which are still used today in film and
television (such as the double exposure, the dissolving of one scene into
another etc., stop frame effects, and the split screen effect where a person
can interact with themselves).

Their contributions
which resulted in a
giant leap forward in cine photography are well known and respected by
historians of early film making but few magicians are aware of what they
did for film photography and the cinema let alone hold them in such high esteem.

Standards were set for
film making and the cinema today during the first ten years of invention
and the most notable names who can be acclaimed as being the first for
inventing some aspect of them are Thomas Edison & W.K.L.
Dickson (U.S.A.), the Lumiere Brothers & Georges Melies
(France), R.W. Paul, Birt Acres, W.R. Booth & Friese
Green (Britain). We should be proud that two of those names were
magicians & Illusionists.

Within the brotherhood
of magic, many of us talk about and give credit to who invented a
particular trick, move or illusion as a legacy from the past. Some of us
may even give credit to some magicians of yesteryear who invented other
things (such as Jasper Maskelyne's important war efforts during WW2). It
was felt only right that Dragonskull provides an area in which to give
credit to W.R. Booth & Georges Melies for their
pioneering work in producing what we see today in films, cinema and
television without a thought by many on it's heritage from over 100 years
ago.

[Note:1. Cinema
is just an abbreviation for Cinematograph. Although the word 'cinematograph' (pronounced as
'sineematograph')
is the widely used term these days, originally it was spelt Kinematograph
and pronounced as 'kineematograph'. The latter was kept in the name of the
British employees Trade Union, N.A.T.K.E - The National Association of
Theatre and Kinematograph Employees. Note:2. The jerkiness of the
early films was due to the film having to be wound through the camera by a
handle, known as hand cranking. Note:3. All the special effects or
trick photography in the early years could only be done as the film was
being taken, known as 'editing in camera', therefore a great deal of
scripting, planning and rehearsing was needed before the film was taken. Note:4.
The flickering you see on early films is partly due to the film being hand
cranked but also because the surviving early film stock had badly
degraded. Note:5. Until 1912, the film stock used was a
cellulose nitrate base, a derivative of guncotton/flash wool, and was
highly flammable. This was not a good material to pas in front of a hot projector
lamp and many accidents did occur. Even opening film cans today containing
nitrate film for the first time in a hundred years is an extremely
dangerous task as it could explode in flames.]

Enjoy the following film clips
direct from YouTube and if you want to see more
examples, you can find some on YouTube and also on the DVD from the
British Film Institute (details supplied further on). Further
historical information can be found by visiting the links given in the
credits. FINAL NOTE, these clips can only be seen whilst they
remain on Youtube.

Part Two: Courtesy of the
BFI under the terms of the Creative Archive License

Robert
W. Paul
was the leading pioneer of British film, and made the successful
transfer from inventor to entrepreneur to remain a major figure in
the industry for its first ten years. Famously, he stumbled into
film in 1894 and soon wanted to go into film production. Early in
1895, he employed photographer, Birt Acres to assist him in
making a suitable working camera. In March of that year the
partnership of Paul and Acres had produced a working camera which
Acres used to make the first film in Britain - 'Incident at
Clovelly Cottage'. The partnership only lasted a short time before
they parted company and went their own ways.

Paul
began work on improving the camera and he also developed a projector, the Theatrograph,
giving the first public demonstration on 20th February 1896 at Finsbury
Technical College. The demonstration proved successful and he was soon
hired by enterprising businessmen to hold regular showings at venues
around London - including the Egyptian Hall (the principle hall within
being used by Maskelyn & Cook for their illusion and magic shows) from
19 March 1896. It was during this time that he met Walter R.
Booth.

Sales of the R. W. Paul cameras and
projectors soared, his mark 2 improved model of the Theatrograph sold for
80 pounds and this machine formed the prototype for the modern film
projector.
Paul was kept incredibly busy spending evenings traveling from music hall
to music hall rewinding the films during each journey before showing them
at the next venue. Between
March 1886 and March 1897, Paul managed to make a profit of over 12,000
pounds from an initial investment of 1000 pounds. In 1898 Paul began
construction on the first film studios in Britain at Muswell Hill, North
London and during that summer produced over eighty short dramatic films.

[Note:
In 1890, 1000.00 pounds would have the same spending worth of today's
59,890.00 pounds and 12,000 pounds would be 718,680.00 pounds]

In
1910 Paul shut down his production company and destroyed all his film
negatives and left the film industry forever. Some of his short films have
survived and are held at The British Film Institute, who occasionally
place them on YouTube.

Walter R. Booth, born
in Worcester on 12 July 1869, was a porcelain painter and an amateur
magician, who joined the magic company at the Egyptian Hall in London in
the 1890s. Booth
became a producer of trick films for Robert
Paul in 1899. In 1906, Booth
moved to the Charles Urban Trading
Company. He established his own studio in his garden at
Isleworth, London, with Harold
Bastick as his cameraman. Notable among the films produced
there were the first British animated film, The Hand of the Artist
(1906), The Sorcerer's Scissors (1907) and When the
Devil Drives (1907). His invasion fantasies, such as The
Airship Destroyer (1909) and The Aerial Submarine
(1910), are entertaining prototype science fiction fables in the Jules
Verne mould. Most notable though might be Scrooge (1901)
which was the first film made of a Charles Dickens story. [put Scrooge
1901 into YouTube to see what remains of the film]

Film Synopsis

This film WAS made and released in 1901 (released
1902 in the States) and NOT 1907 as some website resources
state (a typo mistake on one site stating that the film was made in
1907 has led to many wrongly accepting this as the correct date. You
should ignore the date given on the following film clip).

The Haunted Curiosity Shop is a showcase of the elaborate
and ambitious special effects and techniques developed by director and
illusionist
W.R. Booth and producer and inventor R.W. Paul. The story features a curiosity
shop owner discovering that the various pieces of bric-a-brac on his
shelves have a life of their own as he is beset by all manner of
apparitions: floating heads, disembodied women, Egyptian mummies and an
animated skeleton. The effects where, respectively, a woman's two halves
rejoin themselves and a man in armour is systematically dismembered, are
particularly impressive.

Georges
Jean Melies (pronouned mal-yaes)was born in Paris in 1861 and from a very early
age he showed a particular interest in the arts which led, as
a boy, to a place at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris where Melies
showed particular interest in stage design and puppetry. His
father owned a footwear factory and in 1884 it was at his
request that Melies
continued his studies in England so as to learn the language
in readiness to possibly joining his fathers business. Whilst
he was in London he became very keen on magic and stage
illusions through his regular visits to The Egyptian Hall to
watch Maskelyne & Cooke. On
his return to Paris he worked at his father’s factory and
also developed stage illusions which he performed at Theatre
Robert Houdin.

When his father retired, Melies
ran the family factory as manager and this position enabled him to
raise enough money to buy the Theatre
Robert Houdin when it went up for sale in 1888. With ownership of the theater,
Melies
worked full time as a theatrical
showman whose performances revolved around magic and illusionist
techniques which he studied while in London as well as working on his
own tricks.

On December 28 1895, Lumiere
brothers unveiled their Cinematographe to the public and Melies
was in that audience. He was astounded and after the show he approached
the Lumiere brothers with a view to
buying one of their machines but they turned him down. Determined to get
into moving pictures, he visited R. W. Paul in England and after seeing
his camera and projector, he built his own. He presented his first film screening
on April 4th 1896 at the Theatre Robert Houdin and success resulted in him
making more and more films, often of himself (as he had the reputation of being
a leading magician/illusionist in France at that time).

Through an accidental jamming of his
camera whilst making a film, he discovered the first simple camera special
effect whereby objects
could be made to suddenly appear, disappear or be transformed into other
objects. He delved deeper into what special effects could be achieved with
film and was the first to pioneer the double exposure (1898), the first
split screen with performers acting opposite themselves (1898) and in 1899
he pioneered the first dissolve.As you
will soon see for yourself, he used these special effects in an amazing
way but most importantly, he scripted his films to employ these effects in
a logical manner and not just for the sake of it.

In 1912, Melies
abandoned film production owing to a shrinking market and stiff
competition and rivalry from big French and American studios. In 1913, the
film production company Melies
had set up was forced into bankruptcy by these companies. In
1915 he was forced to turn his studio into a Variety Theatre and
resumed his pre-film career as a Showman.

During
his hey day, he had produced over 500 films on cellulose but few exist
today as the French Army seized most of his stock and melted it down into
boot heels during World War 1. In
1923 he was declared bankrupt and his beloved Theatre Robert Houdin was
demolished. Melies
almost passed into obscurity, having to earn a living
as a toy salesman at
the Montparnasse
station.
[Watch the film, HUGO, for a nice portrayal of this part of his life]

In
the late 1920's, his substantial contribution to cinema was finally
recognized by the French and he was presented with the Legion of Honour
and in 1932
the Cinema Society gave Melies
a rent free home in Château d'Orly.
After his rediscovery, Melies
once more took to stage performances.Georges
Melies
died in 1938 after making over five hundred films in total -
financing, directing, photographing and starring in nearly every one.

You
can view a number of films by Georges Melies
(many of which are of a bizarra-ish fantasy nature) on Youtube but the
ones below have been selected because of their quality, that they feature Melies
and they show the high level he attained in using the special
effects he pioneered.

Evocation
Spirite 1899Courtesy
of YouTube

You
can only play this film whist it remains available on YouTube.

An Up To Date Conjuror
1899Courtesy
of YouTube

You
can only play this film whist it remains available on YouTube

The
Man With The Rubber Head 1901 [a restored version]
unfortunately distorted as it is has been formatted for wide screen.Courtesy
of YouTube

There
is a large collection of these films at www.youtube.com
. Well worth a visit there.

Finally....

Althoughthe
illusions and tricks shown in these films were achieved by what we now
call camera trickery, they and the themes of the films can certainly be
classed as Bizarre Magic which audiences of those bye gone days could not
get enough of. Modern day films contain lots of wondrous effects
generated by computers (CGI for example) but computers are also used to
recreate the same special effects as those described on this page and
examples of this can be seen in the film 'The Illusionist'.